Sprinkles CMO Michelle Wong on how outside influences can make you a better marketer

LinkedIn only tells half the story. My career path has been quite winding. Being born and raised in Los Angeles, I was a working actor from the age of five to my early 20s. During that time, I didn’t realize that a lot of the things that I was learning in that work would apply to everything that I do now.

I went to university, but I hated it. I was missing a sort of a creative streak, so I went to London and studied at Le Cordon Bleu on Marylebone Lane and I graduated with my degree in French Cuisine and Patisserie. I worked as a pastry chef at the Grosvenor House Hotel for a year, and I quit because I couldn’t hack it. It was just so physical.

What I love so much about that business was the intensity and the creativity and how you need to master the ability to manage 20 different activities at once and have an end product that was flawlessly executed. When I had to move back to the US, my father suggested that I try advertising. I’d never considered it before, and I got an internship at Leo Burnett.

I was very lucky, and I loved it. My first day I was in a brainstorm about Christmas. It was a very small room, a ton of people, not enough seats, standing around, shouting ideas. If an idea was good, you got your idea put on the board. They allowed me to participate. I got an idea on the board, and it changed my life. I had never felt anything so exhilarating before.

I absolutely loved it: I had found my career. There were some real characters – people would occasionally warn me about an ECD: “Oh my gosh, he’s got a reputation for X, Y and Z.” I wasn’t fazed. I could handle French chefs in the kitchen. The ECDs were less scary because they didn’t have knives.

I was comfortable under the pressure to perform, deliver to timelines and always aim for perfection. The collaboration, partnership and teamwork required to create a quality end product felt comfortable and exciting at the same time.

Working in advertising, I spent a lot of time in packaged goods: everything from food to spirits, some travel and tourism. I started my career with a taboo brand – tobacco. I was on the Marlboro team. It was a fascinating time and I’m very fortunate to have had that experience.

I was at huge agencies like Leo Burnett, then mid-sized ones like Draft FCB. Then I moved back home to Los Angeles, I wanted to have the boutique agency experience. I went to M&C Saatchi, and a team of 20 people in their LA office. I think I really understood the mechanics of an agency at that point. We all did everything: I was getting the mail, writing a script, handling billing and pitching new business.

Much as I loved it, my strength really was on the client service side, managing relationships, selling work in, creating that organic growth with the existing accounts, things like that. So when I moved to Dailey, I was able to do that. There were 150 people there and I thought the number was perfect – like Goldilocks: not too big, not too small.

You knew everyone at the agency, but you still had support. I was there for over a decade, really honing in on my CPG experience, working with Nestle and its domestic and global brands across every category. I’ve worked on products from every aisle in the grocery store.

Our partner team had bought ourselves back from IPG, and we were independent. We did that for four years, and when we sold, I was absolutely heartbroken and crushed, because I felt like we were really onto something.

I loved being able to be in a position where we were making decisions about the makeup of our agency, the work that we did, the people we brought on, the clients that we worked with. It was everything that I wanted my advertising life to be.

I turned to consulting. I did everything from helping agencies set up their new business practices to rebranding to CPG startups to running AOR searches for Panda Express. Sprinkles was meant to be a three-month project. After three weeks, the CEO said, ‘I think you should stay full-time.’ And I wholeheartedly agreed.

Michelle delivers a keynote lecture at WPP Beach

What is your best memory of a marketing success, that you were part of, where you felt: “This is me. This is the role for me.”

Back at Dailey, there was this a pitch. Our idea was: we’re taking the pitch out of the conference room. We didn’t have any materials – a deck or images with us. Instead, we said: “Come with us. We’re going for a walk.” And we basically staged all of the creative out in the wild.

We bought a billboard; we did wild postings on the walk across the street to an apartment; we rented the apartment out for the day, and walked our clients into a room where our hired improv actors were going about their day and showing how they experienced the product.

Our actors showed how they received the product in the mail, how they opened it, how they shared with their friends and how they enjoyed the product. We took them through the entire customer experience, physically and in real time.

It was probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, it was like a full-on live production. We had had a team of people with radios and microphones coordinating the series of events. They would warn us if the clients were turning a block corner, because we had a car that had been wrapped, and we needed to make sure the car would stop and then drive past our clients as they’re walking.

It was the most fun thing I’ve ever done. The risk we took – the possibility of there being a ‘factor x’ that might derail the whole thing was huge. But in the end, it was fine. It was such a big pitch, and we won. Even if we hadn’t won, the experience was incredible. Everyone in the agency from the CEO down had a part in this. It was so fulfilling. I really felt that we were working in a business that solves problems creatively, puts on a show and makes things happen, wins clients and helps them achieve their goals. And it all was there in that one day.

For those who may not know, who might be on the other side of the Atlantic, please can you tell us about Sprinkles? What’s the offer?

Sprinkles is an amazing cupcake brand that is 19 years old. We’re a national brand founded by an incredible entrepreneur named Candace Nelson. 19 years ago, the food and beverage landscape was very different. Today, you can go out and get a donut with truffles on it or a very fancy cupcake with 24-karat gold flakes. You couldn’t do that 19 years ago.

Candace introduced this idea of having a premium cupcake, elevating the humble grocery store cupcake that you would bring to your friends’ parties into this gourmet experience. It took the US by storm. The brand has been a huge success first because it’s an incredible product, but second because we’ve really leaned into who we are.

Our brand and our products are centered entirely around joy and celebration. We’ve had a lot of media and celebrity support, but at the at the end of the day, the attachment to the brand and the product comes from such a deep, emotional place. We really understand that, and we are committed to creating more initiatives to fuel the growth and sustainability of the business.

‘Inviting you in.’ A Sprinkles Bakery

How do you rate the value of emotional connection with marketing campaigns?

It’s absolutely everything. If I don’t feel something, then you are going to forget it. We adopted a new production process in terms of how we captured content and photography in our creative and the edict was: when you look at this – what do you feel?

Sure – it’s a cupcake, but our shared image or campaign should impart some sort of emotion: desire, curiosity, empathy. If your work doesn’t generate a feeling, you’re not done yet.

Why should brands balance long-term brand building with more short-term sales activation?

It is essential. If you’re focusing solely on one or the other, you’re not going to be met with a lot of success. Balancing the two can be hard. In the case of Sprinkles, brand is the engine behind our growth. It’s why people want to open Sprinkles bakeries in Korea, Dubai and Mexico.

But brand marketing also includes the day-to-day activities like handling customer complaints, our social media presence and even what our menu boards look like when you walk into a bakery. For me, as long as we are all marching towards the same ‘north star,’ and we all understand what the brand is about, what our values are, then that makes everything else very easy.

The hard part is getting everyone on the same page. And when I say everyone, I mean the full cross-functional team, from technology to operations to supply chain to everyone involved with our business including at the field level – those working at our bakeries. You need to have buy-in from everyone that builds the brand.

How important is creativity in advertising?

I don’t know if you can advertise well without creativity. But delivering creative that outperforms others is tough. The competitive set is huge. You’re not just competing against who’s in your category, but also against anything that grabs your target audience’s attention. To be memorable, to be loved, to convince others that they need your brand in their life requires creativity.

Inside a Sprinkles bakery

Of what initiative that you have overseen are you the most proud?

I think that we’ve done incredible work at Sprinkles – work that champions our being female-founded and having an incredibly diverse workforce. Over 70% of our bakeries’ General Managers are female. In the hospitality business, this is very rare.

Our audience is largely female too. We’ve done a lot of work around creating an emotional connection through food. We've also done that through celebrating the stories of diverse women from a variety of cultural backgrounds. We brought in female chefs from around the country to help us develop new products based on their lived experiences. These were incredibly successful.

We wanted to tell the stories of everyone that touches the business and that included those that consume our products. We’ve worked with celebrity chefs, we’ve partnered with brands, and we've been able to do things like celebrate Diwali, the Hindu festival of light.

We have played a meaningful role during Hispanic Heritage Month and also with the LGBTQ+ community during Pride. Our celebrations run throughout the year and has become who we are: some of these recipes go on to become our top-selling cupcakes.

Firstly, they’re all freaking delicious – truly amazing cupcakes. But second – each recipe has a story behind it. And people connect with the story behind this flavor. For example: a cupcake might be inspired by candy one of our chefs had with her Mexican grandmother.

Whether or not you’ve ever had that candy before doesn’t matter, because there’s a resonant story there about love and connection and it is attached to a product that’s unbelievably delicious. And I think those are the things that I’m really proud of. It’s not just a cupcake – there’s so much more to it.

How do you navigate the ‘white water rapids’ of fast moving technology and tech platforms?

I think you’re right. It’s incredibly overwhelming, and it’s changing every day. As a marketer, there has to be a curiosity to want to know, and then to try things out. I think this also flags the fact that a CMO’s responsibilities are so broad right now. In my opinion, they go so far beyond marketing.

At Sprinkles, Technology and Guest Services report into marketing because it is all about that end-to-end brand experience. Equally, it is about having the right people around you. Your technology team and your marketing team are just as curious and excited about what’s happening in the world as you are. Then, most of the time, you can ‘baby-step’ into the tech and try new things before you 100% commit.

The Sprinkles smore

What myth about marketing would you most like to bust?

I don’t know if it’s a myth, but sometimes it feels like there’s a belief that anyone can do marketing. Marketing is fun and I do believe that a great idea can come from anywhere. But it really works when you have a close-knit, informed, holistic, cross-functional team who all understand the values of the brand.

I think where it gets slippery is when some people look at a campaign and think: “Well, that’s easy.” Marketing is all about ‘the sizzle.’ I think if you’re only looking at the sizzle, you don't really understand the experience and craft that it takes to get there: the time and the effort; the coordination and the planning; the strategy and the testing. That’s probably the biggest misconception: ‘the sizzle’ can be misleading.

Sprinkles Chef Series: ‘La Gloria’

How big is your marketing team, and how is it organized?

So we’re a very small and mighty team. We have the larger campaigns and bigger partnership initiatives. We also have the day-to-day of updating menu boards and making sure that the art on the kiosks and the ATM lines up with the new flavor of the day. There’s a ton of mechanical pieces that need to be done. Our internal team does a blend of both, and then we also have external agency partners that help us execute some of the bigger pieces too.

What have you learned in your career that helps you to get the most out of your marketing teams?

I have learned that you have to be in it and work with everyone. It is something that I learned very early on in my advertising career: if the creatives were staying late, you were staying late too.

It helped with the team dynamic: by being there I was supporting. If we were having to put together decks and boards and presentation materials at 2am for a meeting the next day, you weren’t the one that was going home while everyone else was working through the night, because there’s so much happens in those hours. And there’s the camaraderie you create from these formative experiences.

As the CMO, I am participating in the work and really understanding what is going into each project. It makes you a better manager.

‘Vietnamese Coffee’ by Sprinkles

What advice would you give your younger self if you could go back in time? What might you do more of or what might you avoid?

I would tell my younger self to be more vocal and not to worry so much. I was always worried about speaking out of turn. Being able to express yourself, especially in a creative environment, is really important. It doesn’t matter if you make a mistake: you will learn from it.

Which marketers have inspired you or still inspire you today?

I’ve been very fortunate, I’ve cultivated a pretty awesome network of senior marketers and I’m always impressed by the work that they do. Artis Stevens was a former client of mine. He’s the CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, the organization who arrange one-to-one mentoring relationships for young people to help them flourish.

What he’s been able to do, from a leadership standpoint, is very impressive, but he is obviously very involved in the marketing piece too. He has created positive change in the world, and got people to care for a non-profit. It is magical. I think it’s incredible to have that much purpose.

I think any time that a leader works on a brand and helps that brand to better connect with the consumer is always fascinating.

The Sprinkles ‘Matcha-Yuzu’ cupcake

What question would you like me to ask my next senior marketer when I interview them?

I always want to know: “what is the hardest business decision that you’ve had to make, and how did you, how did you do it? How did you get through it? What did you learn from it? I think those are the those are the pieces that we don’t get to share as often.

Our senior marketer question for you is: outside of business and marketing, what makes you tick? What are you into?

I ask the same question when I am recruiting. It’s not a throwaway question in an interview. I want to know: where do you like to eat? What do you like to do? Because I think it really informs who you are, but also what you bring as a marketer. Someone that is curious about the world, that likes to go out to eat, that has traveled, that watches TV.

My husband jokes all the time and says that I watch so much TV, but as a marketer I can argue: it’s good for me! I'm absorbing character development, art direction. I think all of that makes its way into your work.

In answer to your question: I love entertainment. I love a Broadway show or being in the West End. Theatre is a huge love of mine.

If there’s one thing you know about marketing it is…

It’s not easy - but it’s our job to make it look easy. Especially when they join the industry, many think: ‘It’s going to be campaigns, PR and parties.’ But it is hard work. There’s a huge amount of effort behind the communications to ensure that everything makes sense, is meaningful and drives your business forward.

You might die tomorrow so make it worth your while. Worth Your While is an independent creative agency helping brands do spectacular stuff people like to talk about. wyw.agency.

Tim Healey, is founder and curator of Little Grey Cells Club, the UK’s premier Senior Marketer meet up.